Freight Claim: Fill & Download for Free

Short version: I had a store manager that, in writing, asked me to commit fraud.Long Version: We had shipped a TV to another store. The shipping company had dropped it in transit. What should have happened was the receiving store should have received it into inventory and then filed a freight claim on it. In stead they refused shipment, which meant it got sent back to us. So now we had to file the freight claim on it. Not a huge deal, just three times the pain in the butt because the TV wasn’t actually in our inventory, but rather in that weird ether of not-inventory that exists between stores and the supply hub. So the Warehouse manager files the paper work for it. Now the catch to this is because of the ‘not exactly in inventory’ status of the item, the only person at the store level that could actually find out if the freight claim had been paid or not was the store manager.Well this was right around the time that we went through about four store managers in the space of two years. So something like checking if a freight claim for a $400 TV kind of fell between the cracks. The TV sat in the warehouse for a year or so because of this.Enter the then current store manager. He was desperate to cut every corner and save every dollar he could every way he could. He wanted me to process a return on that TV. Remember how I said the TV wasn’t in our inventory? Yeah. Trying to process a return on an item that isn’t in your inventory is at best fraud, and at worst is theft. It would be about the same as if your neighbor sold your car without telling you.I kept deflecting the requests to process the return. I would ‘forget’ about it, or my work load was ‘just too much’ to do it that day. Finally he started pushing the issue and I told him “Look, I’ve got a pretty heavy work load. Do me a favor and send me an email about it.”I thought I was telling him “Put it in writing so I have something to reference when I challenge the firing that I feel is coming from this exchange.” He apparently thought I was being totally sincere, and he sent me the email.I printed it out, took it to the warehouse manager and said “Hey, check out what the boss just told me to do.” He took the email, collected some paper work, scanned some documents and sent an email up to corporate loss prevention.A week later, the store manager ‘voluntarily resigned’.EDIT - several people have made comments that I should of informed the manager of thesituation regarding the tv rather then acting passive aggressive. I did actually inform the manager of the situation with the tv including providing copies of the shipping paperwork, the transfer order, and the case number for the freight claim. I did also explain how performing a return to vendor on the tv would be a fraudulent act and would be illegal. I also explained that I was not going to perform fraud. All of that happened over the course of the first six weeks he was the store manager.

I found the top 5 issues during the day that freight brokers face are:Trucks are late for pickups or deliveriesCan’t find a truck for a loadTrucking company gives back the load.For example this can be caused by a breakdown, driver over hours, they just changed their mind (it happens)Freight claim for damaged productsCan’t find a truck for a load

While at College I took two electives, Traffic and Freight Claims, never thinking they would provide valuable information for my second career, delivering freight.